It wasn’t difficult to figure out Bottega Verde was something special.

They sell great products, at amazing prices, in a superb store concept, and have a cool European brand sensibility which speaks as fluently to millennials as it does to boomers.

They also own their own R&D laboratories and production facilities, which protected margins and meant partners should expect a steady stream of new products.

And they’re a family-owned with a great heritage which can be traced back to rural Tuscany where they were founded as an artisanal herbalist workshop in 1972.

All of this has propelled them to become Italy’s most successful cosmetics and skincare brand with over 500 stores.

But when we met them, this incredible brand was almost completely unheard-of outside Italy.

In Autumn 2015 they sought our help to realise an ambitious international expansion strategy – a strategy to challenge themselves on the global stage.

We knew they were great, but with little or no international reputation to fall back on the pressure was on to develop a pitch that would secure the best possible partners in the most strategically important markets.

We had to put more bait on the hook.

By developing a highly competitive, low-risk and high-reward franchise model we were able to appeal directly to the partners’ commercial instincts. When this was placed alongside the brand itself, we knew we had a very powerful proposition.

We engaged leading franchisees and signed franchise agreements, launching Bottega Verde and its sister brand, Glossip Milano, in a total of 10 countries, including Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

These deals represent 60+ store openings over the next five years, and Bottega Verde is well on its way to becoming a genuinely global brand.

“I’ve worked with Joseph and the RMC team to boost the International growth and expansion of our brands.

The results have been very positive and we are still working with RMC on new expansion opportunities. I appreciated the skills and retail expertise of Joseph and their valuable network. I was also impressed on how quick and efficient the start-up phase in our collaboration was; they understood really fast the key drivers of our business model and the best way to present it to new potential Partners.

The main results have been achieved in East-Europe and South-East Asia and in both the regions we started to expand through our business model of boutique and SIS stores.

I personally consider Joseph a really reliable and trustful person and we are very satisfied having him and RMC as partner to support our brands globally.”